The UK ESRC is funding a new Productivity Institute, which will be based at the Alliance Manchester Business School and led by Bart van Ark, who was director of the GGDC for a long time and who remains affiliated with the GGDC and the University of Groningen. The £32m of funding will support a broad-based research agenda in which the GGDC will participate, in part through the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE). GGDC contributions will focus on mapping and understanding the productivity slowdown, relating this to the changing and shifting nature of activities and the implications for regional divergence.